


Batonebo

by TheThirdGreywaren (ShelbyDraven)



Series: Knights in Shining Cosplay [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Undercover, spiked drinks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 07:04:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6792379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShelbyDraven/pseuds/TheThirdGreywaren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A liar in dark sunglasses meets a pretty dame in a bar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Batonebo

**Author's Note:**

> A short, sort of experimental drabble of my Sole, Angela 'Charmer' Nolan, and one of her best friends, Deacon. My first FO4 thing, so I hope it doesn't suck? I'm sure it's fine.

It’s a dance, the way she catches his eyes.

A slight flick of her fingers tells him to go left, take note of their surroundings. He does, making sure he has the glittering red sequins of her dress in his peripheral vision at all time. It’s easy with the entire dress shimmering under the bare lightbulbs strung around the bar, even with the haze of cigarette smoke lazily stretching up, up, up.

It reminds him to take a casual drag of his cigarette. While he inhales the smoke and keeps it captive in his lungs, he surveys the room and it’s occupants. Casually, of course. There’s a thin line between spying well and… well, spying horribly. Keep back far enough until you’re ready for the conflict and keep the element of surprise securely in your deck of cards. Don’t forget to keep an eye on your pretty red-haired partner, because she’s both the dealer of the game’s hands and the priceless prize for winning. 

She’s still on the bar stool, though, pretty as can be with a low cut red dress as her mask. It’s a little funny, seeing her without her oversized Atom Cats jacket and her hair pulled back in a messy bun.

Then again, the girl wearing the Cats jacket with streaks of dried blood and dirt on her cheeks as her makeup was Charmer, through and through. If someone the size of a prepubescent child could be that charming, they would certainly find some competition with his pint-sized partner.

The dame at the bar was ordering a drink now, the sequins flashing as she adjusted herself on the bar stool. That was his cue, of course, and he finished his cigarette before extinguishing it in the ceramic ashtray at an empty table.

It’s casual, to the untrained eye. The way he lazily blows out his last lungful of smoke and strides to the bar to order a drink. It’s the best disguise, to be at ease when every single sense is in hyperdrive. To pretend to be oblivious to the man dropping the tablet in Charmer’s unattended drink, when the trained eye knows that he notices every detail, from the faded burn scar on his right pinkie finger to the way he reeked of booze, even from several feet away.

It’s even harder to watch the slight grimace twisting her face when she takes a sip of the spiked drink.

It’s all part of the plan, every single detail playing out in their card game, with a deck of cards that they rigged. They spoke about these exact events as he helped her zip the back of her dress, dodging her small fists when she heard about her specific part. Dez hadn’t been too happy about that either, and ditto for Mayor Hancock and Detective Valentine.

Sure, he wasn’t thrilled to risk his partner’s life like that, not in the slightest, but the price of intel was always going to be their lives. It was the work of the Railroad in the fucked up Commonwealth Land, after all.

Besides, Charmer did agree to it, in the end. They had done a pinky promise, the pinnacle of sacred oaths, and he had sent her into the bar.

Now he was here to pick her up, like a true knight in a shining disguise.

That was the plan, anyway. It was always the plan, to be there to pick her up when she needed it, because she always did the same for him.

Today, though, it appears that someone else tampered with their deck of cards, because Charmer puts out her cigarette.

When they first began this entire strategy of subterfuge, they first established a set of ‘safe words and actions’. It was vital to be able to signal to the other when the plan was drastically changing, and when the disguises needed to be dropped before harm came to either them or anyone innocent nearby.

The act of putting out the cigarette is the most important, to Deacon at least. It’s the strategy’s catalyst, the tool that paves the way for conversation and interaction and the one that both signals the beginning and end of a mission.

Unsurprisingly, just after Charmer suffocates the tip of her cigarette against the ceramic orange ashtray, she falls off her chair. Deacon is there to catch her though, smiling and laughing and charming the small group of the more sober customers so that they let him carry her unconscious form out of the bar with no resistance.

It helps that the bartender is in cahoots with Glory, too, because as the night goes on he convinces the customers that the pair of sunglasses and the shimmering red dress were nothing, just flashes that disappeared in the haze of cigarette smoke.

Deacon’s night doesn’t go as smoothly. Charmer is heavy, even for her small stature, and as he carries her up the stairs to their shared hotel room he plans twelve ways to get her back for being so damn heavy.

However, the warm breath brushing against his neck is comforting, reminding him that he  _ didn’t fuck her up _ like he tends to do when it comes to the women he cares about in life. She’s heavy, but she’s alive, and the revenge checklist he holds mentally dwindles down to a simple, yet classic prank. Because he can’t let her off the hook entirely, Charmer knows better than that for sure. Pretending to be asleep for the whole time he carried her back to their room was plain insulting. He was a master spy, her Death Bunny other half, and he knew she was awake the moment the breath on his collarbone changed rhythm.

He does admire her for not punching him in the face when he presses the wet paintbrush tip to her forehead, though. Her expression barely breaks, in fact, and when he finally pulls away, she opens her eyes with a scowl.

Being a perfect gentleman, he hands her a mirror. She considers the red colored ‘ _ PAINT _ ’ graffiti on her forehead, then gives Deacon a wicked grin.

“You forgot my heels at the bar, Dee.”

“Well, shit.”

Even master spies have their bad days.


End file.
